Many people enjoy drinking coffee as part of a daily routine. However, preparing coffee is time-consuming and can be an inefficient use of time and energy (including electrical energy) when only a single cup is to be prepared. Meanwhile, coffee makers that are designed to prepare a single cup of coffee using a single-serve ground coffee container (e.g. a Keurig® K-Cup® pod) produce an enormous amount of waste that is harmful to the environment. The result of single use K-Cup type pods is that the planet is literally being destroyed. Tens of billions of pods end up in landfills annually. If the discarded pods are placed end-to-end, they would circle the globe 12 times! This means that the waste problem is growing and will grow as more companies and unless mitigated will continue to cause problems exponentially for our planet.